Ingenue (25 page)

If Clara thought the scene inside the club had been chaotic, it was nothing compared to what she found outside. The alleyway was filled with people—FBI agents she’d expected, but outnumbering them six to one were black men and a few women. Most of them were dressed to the nines and carried instruments in cases—they were musicians, she realized. Someone out on the street was blowing a horn, and the plaintive sound wended its way into the alley.

“Who are all these people?” Parker asked. “Why are they here?”

“A parade?” Clara guessed.

“Clara!” a voice called, and from the crowd came Vera Johnson and her handsome trumpeter boyfriend, Evan. Vera looked stricken. “Is he all right? Jerome?”

“He’s fine, Vera,” Clara said. “I think they’re bringing him out—” Before she could finish, the girl threw her arms around Clara and crushed her in an embrace.

“Oh, thank you!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Clara said once they’d parted. “Though it looks like you were ready to do something.”

“We couldn’t muster the cavalry,” Evan said, shrugging, “but we did the next best thing: Everybody we know and everybody
they
know in the industry. Figured Carlito and his gang couldn’t shoot
all
of us. We figured we could overpower them with a big enough mob. There can be power in numbers.”

And then Jerome was there, walking down the alley between two agents.

Vera flung herself at him, practically knocking him off his feet. The agents stepped back and reached for their weapons, but Jerome just waved them off and said, “It’s my
sister
, guys.”

Jerome pulled Vera into a tight hug, and she sobbed into her brother’s chest. “I’m so sorry, Jerome,” she said, the words muddled by her tears. “For everything you’ve gone through. I’m just so glad you’re safe.”

“Shhh,” Jerome said, “of course I’m safe. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Vera looked as though she wanted to answer the question but had no idea what to say. She seemed so young, so frightened; she reminded Clara how young they all were. Publishing articles? Chasing after mobsters? Capturing killers? What normal seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds did these sorts of things?

If nothing else
, Clara thought,
let it never be said that I haven’t lived an exciting life
.

For the first time in a long while, Clara felt truly alone. But she wasn’t scared. Instead, she felt exhilarated, fresh, and new. Life wasn’t always about love—that was the old way, when a girl lived solely for her man. Nowadays life could be about promise, about work—about a girl’s finding something she was good at and following through.

She was done trying to be the woman Marcus or Parker wanted her to be.

She was going to be the woman
she
wanted to be.

This story was just for her.

GLORIA

CARLITO MACHARELLI KILLED AT SPEAKEASY OPENING!

CHICAGO DEB SHOWS MOBSTER WHO’S BOSS!

FORBIDDEN LOVE, GANGSTERS, AND MURDER: A NIGHT NEW YORK WILL NEVER FORGET!

It had finally happened: Gloria Carmody was a star.

She carefully clipped articles from the
Times
, the
Post
, and the
Wall Street Journal
. New York papers weren’t the only ones covering her story—the reporters in Chicago had been all over it, too. Several made trips to New York just so they could interview the teenage aristocrat who’d fallen in love with a black musician and shot a gangster. The
Tribune
and the
Evening Journal
had both already run more than one two-page spread about her.

That was how she learned about Ruth Coughlin and how Ruth’s boss, Al Capone, hadn’t been too happy about Tony Giaconi’s murder. Al Capone had just managed to get Chicago under his thumb. How would it have looked if word had got out that Capone couldn’t control his own guys? That one of those guys got knocked off by a black piano player and a deb? So Capone sent Ruth to clean up Carlito’s mess. She took care of Bastian first on the docks in Chicago. Then she went after Carlito, Gloria, and Jerome in New York.

Gloria set the articles aside and opened the black scrapbook Clara had brought her as a gift.

The magazine article that took up the first few pages always made her smile. Clara’s photographer had taken about a million pictures of Gloria, Hank, and the other agents after they arrived at the police station. Gloria looked like a frightened little girl in some and a back talking criminal in others.

But in the photo Clara and Parker had chosen for the article, Gloria’s face had just the right mix of righteous anger, pride, and bruised glamour. She looked like a white light next to the group of dark-suited FBI agents.

GLORIA CARMODY FIGHTS FOR LOVE

By Clara Knowles

Eighteen-year-old Gloria Carmody is a flapper extraordinaire, the embodiment of all that the daring modern girl strives to be—with all that modern girl’s tarnished dreams and dizzy exuberances, all her accidental sins and passionate mistakes. Gloria has dared to live without society’s approval. She’s gambled everything so that she can be the one thing that matters most to her: true to herself.

In Chicago, she rejected a picture-perfect society marriage to pursue the taboo love of piano player Jerome Johnson. That’s not all she went after—she also snagged a job singing the blues at a top Chicago club, the Green Mill. She courageously defended Jerome’s life and her own against the gangster Tony Giaconi, shooting him dead when he threatened her. And when, six months after her crime and in another city, Gloria at last had to face her punishment onstage at the Opera House, she didn’t shed a single tear.

And yet she is sitting in a jail cell, awaiting trial, instead of out on the street, living her life to the fullest. How can we, as a society, condemn a girl for protecting herself against a man sent to kill her and her lover—

Gloria was grateful for the article. It was the first story about her case to appear, and it set the tone for everything that followed. Instead of depicting her as a notorious criminal, the press hailed her as “the new woman”—a leader for flappers and other strong-willed women to follow.

Only, she didn’t feel like much of a heroine right now. Everything in this place was gray—the brick walls, the sheets on her cot’s too-thin mattress, and the steel desk bolted to the wall. Sometime soon, the Chicago police would show up to take her to a more permanent cell in that city. There would be a trial, then most likely prison for life.

For the past three days, Gloria had felt as if she’d done nothing but answer questions—from the police, the FBI, the hordes of reporters. Then there had been visits from her friends. Clara had come every day, sometimes with her editor and sometimes without.

“Hopefully my articles will get you out of there soon,” Clara had said earlier that day, leaning against the bars of Gloria’s cell. “No offense, Glo, but gray is
not
your color.”

“Don’t worry, Gloria,” Parker had said. “With everything Clara’s been writing about you, the judges in Chicago will award you some kind of medal before they let you spend another second in prison.” He’d given Gloria a tight smile—she figured he was being casual to calm her nerves about staying in a holding cell.

Truthfully, Gloria liked Parker: He seemed even more intelligent than he was attractive, and that was saying something. But she kept hoping Clara would turn up with Marcus instead. Gloria had been very happy to see Marcus the day after her arrest, but he hadn’t been his usual jokey self without Clara.

“Marcus, what happened between you and Clara?” Gloria had asked.

He’d smiled a watery shadow of a grin. “Who cares about my depressing tales of lost love? You’ve got bigger problems. Figured out how to tunnel outta here yet?”

Lorraine had shown up just as Marcus was leaving. “So, anyway, I’m so, so sorry for what I was going to do, I didn’t think Carlito would hurt you, I just—”

Gloria put her hand up. “Stop. I will never forgive you for what you did to Clara back in Chicago or what you tried to do here. You were ready to let Carlito
kill
me and Jerome just because I was mad that you ratted out my affair to Bastian? Because I was angry with you for making such a show about Clara at my party?”

“Carlito
said
he wouldn’t—”

“No one is that stupid, Raine, not even you.” Lorraine was silent. Gloria sighed, and then said, “But like it or not, you saved Jerome’s life and mine. So … thank you.”

Lorraine grinned. “Anytime,
ma chérie
. So … has Hank asked about me?”

Gloria had been allowed one tearful telephone call to her mother. She’d expected her mother to be angry—about her running away, about Jerome, about Tony, about all of it—but Beatrice had been nothing but happy to talk to her little girl again. Beatrice had arrived in New York a few days earlier and had spent every moment working every connection she had to get Gloria out of jail.

Gloria hadn’t heard from Lowell Carmody yet, and she didn’t really expect to. Her father had been ready to cut her off when he found out about Jerome. Gloria was pretty sure that on the disapproval ladder, gangster-killing was at least a few rungs above a black fiancé.

Her chest tightened at the thought of Jerome.

Along with Vera and Evan, he’d been barred from visiting her even once since she’d been arrested. It was so incredibly unfair. Gloria and Jerome had spent their last month together in New York fighting over their impossible future. And just when they’d decided to make the impossible possible, to go up against the world with only each other as allies, to do everything that love was about, they’d been torn apart.

She sat up quickly when she heard footsteps in the hall.

Agent Hank Phillips appeared outside her cell. At the Opera House, Gloria had thought Hank was twenty or twenty-one. But in his black suit and tan trench coat, with a few days’ stubble on his chin, he looked a little older, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Of course, he’d have to be at least that old if he was an FBI agent.

“Hey there, princess,” he said, smiling. “Still pasting up that scrapbook of yours?”

Gloria shrugged. “Not like I’ve got much else to do.”

“Now, that’s where you’re wrong.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. “Want one?”

After days of snarky insults, Hank was being weirdly nice. Still, Gloria hadn’t had a cigarette in ages. She stood, and Hank lit two cigarettes. He handed one to her and she took a puff. She ended up coughing. “These things aren’t good for a person.”

Hank crossed his arms. Lorraine had told Gloria how Hank had tricked her. Gloria didn’t have a lot of love for Lorraine, but the trickery made her dislike Hank even more.

“I’ve got a proposition,” he said. “You can sit here in jail, or you can do something for us.”

What sort of help could the FBI want from her?

“It’s not
you
we’re after, Gloria,” Hank said. “There are bigger fish to fry. And we can use you to get to them. I’ve talked to some folks on your behalf, and we’ve come up with a deal: If you help us, you go free. If you don’t, well …” He took a drag from his cigarette. “But it’s not gonna be easy. This’ll probably be the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in your life.”

Gloria glanced back at her scrapbook, thinking of the last few lines of Clara’s article.

So, girls, take heed. Whenever you feel as if you’re really pushing the limits, think of Gloria Carmody. Think of all she’s been through and push further, push harder. Fight for what you want, for the people you love. Be a true flapper—be fearless.

Gloria certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in jail. She wanted to be with Jerome, to make music with him onstage and in life. And she had better live up to her own example, right?

She looked down at her left ring finger, wishing she’d been allowed to keep that one bit of sparkle in this cell. She’d only worn the ring for a few hours, but already her finger felt wrong without it.

The hardest thing she would ever have to do in her life? She had already killed a man, fled her childhood home, lived in poverty, had her heart broken, and been arrested and sent to jail.

What could be harder than that?

Then Gloria realized: living a life without Jerome.

That would be the hardest thing.

She put a hand on her hip and stared Hank straight in the eye.

“What do you need me to do?”